Every now and then, an email is received that is so vile and reprehensible, so insulting to the intelligence, and so laughably outrageous that you think: Who could possibly be swayed by such garbage? Then you remember about all those grandmas that get conned out of their life savings – and the millions of people that voted for Bush-Cheney in 2004 – and you just know that it is your civic duty to respond and attempt to clear the air of the putrid stench. Here is the latest piece of political sleeze-mail to hit my inbox, followed by my response.


THE OFFENDING SLEEZE-MAIL:

GHOST OF "TOKYO ROSE"
Anyone who remembers anything about World War II or has studied anything about World War II will understand and remember that during World War II, the Japanese developed a way to demoralize the American forces. The Japanese psychological warfare experts developed a message they felt would work.

They gave their psychological warfare script to their famous broadcaster "Tokyo Rose" and every day she would broadcast this same message packaged in different ways, hoping it would have a negative impact on American GI's morale.

What was that demoralizing message? It had three main points:

1. Your President is lying to you.
2. This war is illegal.
3. You cannot win the war.

Does this sound familiar?

Is it because Tokyo Hillary, Tokyo Harry, Tokyo Teddy, Tokyo Nancy, Tokyo Durbin, etc. have all learned from the former enemies of our country and have picked up the same message and are broadcasting it on Tokyo CNN, Tokyo ABC, Tokyo CBS, Tokyo NBC etc., to our troops?

The only difference is that they claim to support our troops before they demoralize them.

Come to think of it... Tokyo Rose told the American Troops she was on their side, also!

Sounds like 2006 all over again!!



MY RESPONSE:

The analogy between critics of George Bush and Tokyo Rose breaks down in 3 important areas:

1. Our President did and continues to lie to us. Mounting evidence from multiple sources both domestic and foreign confirm that the existing pre-war intelligence showed that Iraq has not had a viable WMD program since the early 1990's. Bush knew this but was determined to go to war anyway. Likewise, he and his administration deliberately misinformed us about alleged connections between al Queda and Saddam Hussein. These did not exist. When these rationales for war subsequently failed, he then started talking about a mission to spread freedom and democracy around the world. Unfortunately it was all rhetoric to cover his tracks and retroactively justify the Iraq war. Just as bad, he was going to bring this freedom to oppressed peoples at the point of a gun or the drop of a bomb. Bush lied when he said that no one anticipated the breech of the levees in New Orleans, and only much later did we see a video of Bush sitting utterly silent in a briefing room being told to his face that the levees may fail, several days BEFORE the hurricane hit. Bush lied when he said he would fire anyone in the White House involved in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, and, of course, he didn't. He lied when he told you he wanted to get to the bottom of this treason – because it was George Bush himself who authorized Cheney to tell Libby to leak the identity. Bush lied when he said that Americans were not the objects of warrantless wiretaps, and he reassured the public that all requests to perform wiretaps on U.S. citizens must first go through the FISA court. Now we know that he deliberately bypassed the court and has illegally wiretapped hundreds if not thousands of Americans, and we have only this liar’s words to trust that none of these people were political opponents – or you and I for that matter. These are only a few of the lies our President has fed us, and that we have gobbled up unquestionably. What does it take to impeach this President when Republicans control the House and Senate? Obviously he needs to lie about a receiving oral sex.

2. The war in Iraq is illegal. By any standard of international law, attacking, invading, and occupying a sovereign nation without clear and present danger, without being attacked, without exhausting all diplomatic options - basically going to war as a first resort and not a last - is considered and act of unilateral aggression. Using fancy words like "waging a bold preemptive foreign policy in a volatile post 9-11 geopolitical environment," doesn't change the fact that we attacked the wrong enemy. War is always and should always be the last resort. This is so, not just because of the cost in dollars and human suffering, but because it saves us the embarrassment of telling to the rest of the world "whoops, I guess we were wrong about Saddam Hussein and WMD – my bad." No one says that the U.S. should be a nation of blind pacifists, placating our enemies in the hope that they wont hurt us. We're just saying the burden of proof better be compelling and convincing, and not cherry-picked, before you go on the war path. Much like death, there is time enough to fight a war. Why rush into it?

3. We cannot win this war. We have already toppled the government in Iraq. There are no more war ministries or opulent palaces to strike with our cruise missiles. The war is no longer about destroying the enemy’s hard targets – it is about building the nation’s infrastructure up from scratch faster than the insurgents can tear it down. At present, through blunder after blunder, we have completely lost the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. No amount of over-lording and policing is going to win them back. Each day the distinction between Iraqi citizen and insurgent becomes more blurred, as growing numbers of Sunni’s join the ranks of former Saddam loyalists while Shiite’s join militant militias like that of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The only thing that unites Iraqis today is their hatred of us. Our actions have pushed Iraq to the brink of, if not already into, civil war. Now the enemy is the civilian population, and the only way to vanquish the enemy is to eliminate the people – in essence, killing the cancer by killing the patient. The war is lost, and we are the last to know.


It was Theodore Roosevelt that once said: “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” Was Theodore Roosevelt a Tokyo Rose? According to the anonymous author of GHOST OF "TOKYO ROSE," probably a Swift Boat Veteran for Truth alumnus, Teddy Roosevelt must have been a geisha who walked softly and carried big chop-sticks.

I want this country to live up to its legacy of freedom and opportunity. Not just for our benefit – and our children’s benefit – but to serve as a model for the rest of the world. We are not great just by paying lip service to the claim. Our greatness will be measured by our actions, not our empty promises; and lately, our actions have not been very flattering.

The Constitution states that the government serves the people, not the other way around. That goes for the President as well: especially the President. The office of the President deserves the utmost respect – but the man elected to the office must earn our respect. When he is derelict in his duties, negligently incompetent, morally or intellectually corrupt, or exceeds his Constitutional powers; he should be removed from that office. Bush has been given extraordinary power and latitude up to now because of our "War on Terror," and he has systematically abused his office and betrayed our trust. Past presidents have also been entrusted with wider powers in times of crisis: George Washington during the precarious infancy of our nation, Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt during World War II facing the threat of global Fascism, and Eisenhower through Reagan during the Cold War. None have attempted to turn the Presidency into a monarchy, the Executive branch into a kleptocracy, or the government into a theocracy.

Is the threat of Terrorism really any more of a menace than the other threats this country has faced in the past? Should we complacently relinquish our cherished freedoms and compromise our founding principles simply because our President chants the mantra to “remember the lessons of 9-11?” In and of itself, terrorism will never take down the United States of America. The real threat to our democracy lies from within, and is in the hands of those that will use fear to have you willingly sacrifice the rights that were so hard-earned over the last two centuries. These are the real Tokyo Roses.